Ion Enache http://ionenache.posterous.com /at/posterous.com posterous.com Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:51:00 -0800 VOTE http://ionenache.posterous.com/vote http://ionenache.posterous.com/vote

If you don't vote because you're trying to teach politicians a lesson, you're tragically misguided in your strategy. The very politicians you're trying to send a message to don't want you to vote. Since 1960, voting turnouts in mid-term elections are down significantly, and there's one reason: because of TV advertising.

Political TV advertising is designed to do only one thing: suppress the turnout of the opponent's supporters. If the TV ads can turn you off enough not to vote ("they're all bums") then their strategy has succeeded.

Source

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Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:10:00 -0800 Sizes http://ionenache.posterous.com/sizes http://ionenache.posterous.com/sizes

[...] one marketing strategy to get people to buy more stuff is to manipulate sizes. In the case of clothing, companies often use “vanity sizing,” labeling clothes as a smaller size than they really are. Food serving sizes have followed a form of vanity sizing of their own, with portions getting larger over time. Ben Ostrowsky sent in a great example of changing norms of consumption, highlighting the enormous increase in what is considered a standard serving of soda.

Source

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Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:19:00 -0700 Social Economics http://ionenache.posterous.com/social-economics http://ionenache.posterous.com/social-economics

At a minimum, businesses are starting to realize that checking-in, Tweeting, Liking, and sharing are forms of social currency as well as a personal endorsement. Recognition is the least that a business can do to attract and incentivize social consumers. Introducing special offers and rewards is how we amplify these lucrative endorsements, extend brand reach and transform businesses into social objects where everyday people contribute to ongoing presence in social streams. The benefits are not only mutual, they are empowering.

Read the entire piece over at Brian Solis

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Fri, 29 Oct 2010 03:37:00 -0700 Digg Saga http://ionenache.posterous.com/web-20-tale http://ionenache.posterous.com/web-20-tale

Digg’s collapse has become a cautionary tale for so-called Web 2.0 companies in Silicon Valley, even the current crop of superstars, like Facebook and Twitter. The basic problem is that these new-media companies don’t really have customers; they have audiences. Starting a company like Digg is less like building a traditional tech company (think Apple or HP) and more like launching a TV show. And perhaps, like TV shows, these companies are ephemeral in nature. People flock in for a while, then get bored and move on. [...]

Link

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Fri, 29 Oct 2010 02:18:00 -0700 Web 3.0 http://ionenache.posterous.com/web-30 http://ionenache.posterous.com/web-30

La prochaine étape sera, semble-t-il, un Internet devenu "sémantique" c'est-à-dire "au lieu de simplement afficher le contenu d'une page, la machine pourra en comprendre le sens et faire des liens avec de l'information de même nature se trouvant ailleurs sur le réseau Internet", explique Alexandre Cayla, doctorant en Sciences de la Communication à l'Université de Montréal.

 

Nouvelobs

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Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:06:00 -0700 Momentum: a political marketing fiasco? http://ionenache.posterous.com/momentum-a-political-marketing-fiasco http://ionenache.posterous.com/momentum-a-political-marketing-fiasco

When people say a particular candidate has momentum, what they are implying is that present trends are likely to perpetuate themselves into the future. Say, for instance, that a candidate trailed by 10 points in a poll three weeks ago — and now a new poll comes out showing the candidate down by just 5 points. It will frequently be said that this candidate “has the momentum”, “is gaining ground,” “is closing his deficit,” or something similar.

Each of these phrases are in the present tense. They create the impression that — if the candidate has gone from being 10 points down to 5 points down, then by next week, he’ll have closed his deficit further: perhaps he’ll even be ahead!

There’s just one problem with this. It has no particular tendency toward being true.

 

Entire report available here.

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Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:54:00 -0700 It's not just a car, it's an experience! http://ionenache.posterous.com/its-not-just-a-car-its-an-experience http://ionenache.posterous.com/its-not-just-a-car-its-an-experience

But what about the car itself? Many of us drive huge thirsty cars solo Monday-Friday because we hope to pile the whole family in on the weekend and do something fun. So we select a car based on 20 percent of the usage. The other 80 percent of the time it’s too big, too hard to park and thirstier than we’d like. What we need is a different model. Instead of buying your car from one of the car companies you could buy a package for your transportation.

Alex Bogusky

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Sun, 23 May 2010 03:13:00 -0700 Swimming in a rubbery situation http://ionenache.posterous.com/swimming-in-a-rubbery-situation http://ionenache.posterous.com/swimming-in-a-rubbery-situation

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Having in mind the remark Raiffeisen Bank's CEO Steven van Groningen made on his blog, Edward Lucas of The Economist talks about the unusual power the rubber stamps develop under (post-)communism:

Under communism, rubber stamps were a kind of currency. If your documents didn't have the right ones, they were worthless. And getting one made was very difficult: it was part of the regime's apparatus of repression to control tightly who was allowed to exercise any kind of institutional power. [...] Steven van Groningen has a nice piece about the way in which the rubber stamp mentality shaped business life in that country even after the collapse of communism

Source

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Tue, 18 May 2010 10:33:00 -0700 Guilt free computing with Granola http://ionenache.posterous.com/guilt-free-computing-with-granola http://ionenache.posterous.com/guilt-free-computing-with-granola

Granola makes computers more energy efficient without slowing them down. Granola is safe, easy to use, and allows your computer to operate with the performance of a Ferrari when speed counts but also with the efficiency of a Prius so you don't waste energy.

http://grano.la/

 

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Sun, 09 May 2010 08:50:00 -0700 Random election mishap http://ionenache.posterous.com/random-election-mishap http://ionenache.posterous.com/random-election-mishap

The voting system and the electorate have botched this election. […] In Chingford, an Independent candidate decided to do something frightfully amusing and changed his name to ‘None of the Above’. But because of the way names were presented, he appeared as ‘Above, None of the’ – at the top of the ballot.

- http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/05/08/john-lanchester/gravitas-frenzy/

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Tue, 04 May 2010 12:34:00 -0700 Reshuffling Europe http://ionenache.posterous.com/reshuffling-europe http://ionenache.posterous.com/reshuffling-europe

The Economist presents us with a redrawn map of the old continent:

People who find their neighbours tiresome can move to another neighbourhood, whereas countries can’t. But suppose they could. Rejigging the map of Europe would make life more logical and friendlier.

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Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:53:00 -0700 Red Coke http://ionenache.posterous.com/red-coke http://ionenache.posterous.com/red-coke

More than a fizzy drink, Coca Colla has the taste of a political manifesto complied by Bolivian President Evo Morales...

A certain US soft drinks giant may disagree, but Bolivia has come up with a fizzy beverage it says is the real thing: Coca Colla. [...] It is black, sweet and comes in a bottle with a red label – but similarities to Coca-Cola end there. One is a symbol of US-led globalisation and corporate might; the other could be considered a socialist-tinged affront to western imperialism.

via The Guardian

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Fri, 16 Apr 2010 01:10:00 -0700 Now read this: Eyjafjallajoekull http://ionenache.posterous.com/now-read-this-eyjafjallajoekull http://ionenache.posterous.com/now-read-this-eyjafjallajoekull

We all heard by now about the volcanic ash clouds threatening air traffic in Northern Europe. Geoffrey Pullum from Language Log provides us with a funny outlook on the matter:

Eyjafjallajoekull: the name says it all, doesn't it? No, of course it doesn't. It looks like a kitten walked across your keyboard. It's the name of the glacier covering the volcano in Iceland that just woke up and remembered that its job description says "Spew hot lava ash across northwestern Europe".

 

Also, closely related to the department of linguistics, I'd like to point you to an essay written by Evan Schnittman on the various reading behaviors in today's digital world.

So today there are two successful areas of digital reading – extractive and immersive. Yet there are still frontiers to be opened – most notably in the arena that print textbooks now occupy. I call this type of reading, pedagogic reading.

Pedagogic reading is different than extractive and immersive reading even though it contains both extractive and immersive qualities. Pedagogic reading is reading that is done to explicitly train the brain using building blocks of information that can be recalled and applied to do higher levels of thinking and learning.

 

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Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:12:00 -0800 Recommended App... For Your Eyes Only: f.lux http://ionenache.posterous.com/recommended-app-for-your-eyes-only-flux http://ionenache.posterous.com/recommended-app-for-your-eyes-only-flux

f.lux is a little app which, according to the publisher's website "makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day".

f.lux helps computer users get peak performance out of their devices and claims to improve well-being (helps sore eyes and contributes to a good night's sleep). Just give it a try for a few days and most probably you'll see for yourself why I consider this app a must.

Available for download here in three flavours: Mac OS X, Windows and Linux

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Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:01:00 -0800 One more thing: Fortune's CEO of the decade http://ionenache.posterous.com/fortunes-ceo-of-the-decade http://ionenache.posterous.com/fortunes-ceo-of-the-decade

An excellent article in relation to Steve Job's recent nomination as CEO of the decade:

Superlatives have attached themselves to Jobs since he was a young man. Now that he's 54, merely listing his achievements is sufficient explanation of why he's Fortune's CEO of the Decade (though the superlatives continue). In the past 10 years alone he has radically and lucratively reordered three markets -- music, movies, and mobile telephones -- and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown.

 

The entire article can be found here

 

 

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Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:56:33 -0800 Movie Recommendation: Objectified http://ionenache.posterous.com/movie-recommendation-objectified http://ionenache.posterous.com/movie-recommendation-objectified

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis.

http://objectifiedfilm.com/

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Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:13:00 -0800 Q: What did you buy? http://ionenache.posterous.com/q-what-did-you-buy http://ionenache.posterous.com/q-what-did-you-buy

Interested in finding more about personal buying habits? Then head for obsessiveconsumption.com.

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Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:22:42 -0700 Socialising in the Internet era http://ionenache.posterous.com/socialising-in-the-internet-era http://ionenache.posterous.com/socialising-in-the-internet-era

Of all the areas of life that computer and communications technology seems to be impacting the most is its influence on relationships. Mobile phones, texting, facebook, and Twitter are just a few of the ways in which relationships are being redefined, established, and maintained by technology. We have entered a new era of Relationships 2.0.

Original article here

Conversely,

Technology hasn’t changed the core of relationships. It’s changed the way we meet people, the ease in which we can interact and it’s expanded our pool of faces to choose from, yes. But it hasn’t changed the type of relationships people strive for.
Source here

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Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:54:42 -0700 Rough sketches of homo digitalis http://ionenache.posterous.com/rough-sketches-of-homo-digitalis http://ionenache.posterous.com/rough-sketches-of-homo-digitalis

Digital technology is now such a part of our lives that it is often difficult to imagine what life was like without it. In the space of just 10 or 15 years, the internet has radically altered the way we work, play, shop, study, keep in touch with friends and family, meet new people, express ourselves, and plan our social lives.

Introductory part of the Digital Anthropology Report

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Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:37:03 -0700 What about a radically different way of understanding luxury? http://ionenache.posterous.com/what-about-a-radically-different-way-of-under http://ionenache.posterous.com/what-about-a-radically-different-way-of-under

Think about it. Isn't a straw a luxury item? You don't need it to drink a milkshake, but it does improve the experience.

 

Read the rest of Tom Asacker's take on what sets apart luxury itmes

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